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I am not an easy person to love. Some days I will whisper how beautiful you are while planting gentle kisses all over your body. You will giggle and try to fight me off and in that moment my heart will have never felt so light. But other days when my mind is a storm cloud threatening to explode, I will be a bundle of emotions that I cannot quite keep contained. I will be cold, distant, and you will look at me like I am not the same person you fell in love with. I am a broken light switch. My moods flicker without anyone flipping me on and off. I wake up each morning and wonder which me you will encounter that day. I always hope it is the one who makes you want to stick around. I am not easy to love. But what I need you to understand is that whether there is a war raging inside of my mind or I am the kind person that you adore, I will always love you. I will love you in the morning. I will love you when you cry. I will love you when I am angry. I will love you when you’re being stubborn. I will love you when I don’t even love myself. I will love you. I know that there will be days when you want to give up on me but I am asking you, please don’t. You see, you are the only one who has been able to settle the storm inside of me before I even realize it is surfacing. I am not easy to love but I promise that I will always put up a fight. And I will love you no matter which me my light switch flips on that day.

LC (via chickkyyychickk)

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Nepal Government Struggles to Provide Earthquake Relief

More than 2,400 people were killed and more than 5,900 injured after the quake hit near Katmandu. The death toll is expected to rise.

How to Help

Mercy Corps Mercy Corps has been in Nepal since 2006 and has more than 90 volunteers on the ground trying to distribute water, shelter kits, mosquito netting, tarps, cooking utensils, hygiene materials, and some other household provisions. @mercycorps on Twitter

Catholic Relief Services Catholic Relief Services and its partner organizations have begun procuring emergency relief materials such as shelter kits and sanitation and hygiene materials. @CatholicRelief on Twitter.

Habitat for Humanity International The group says its disaster response teams are coordinating efforts with local government agencies and disaster relief partners, and will be assembling emergency shelter kits. @habitat_org on Twitter.

Global Giving Money donated to support relief operations in Nepal will go toward helping first responders “meet survivors’ immediate needs for food, fuel, clean water, hygiene products, and shelter,” the organization said.  “Once initial relief work is complete, this fund will transition to support longer-term recovery efforts run by local, vetted local organizations.” @GlobalGiving on Twitter.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee   The New York-based nonprofit is providing medical assistance through aid workers traveling from India to Nepal. @TheJDC  on Twitter.

Oxfam Oxfam is an international coalition of charities dedicated to fighting poverty. Aid workers from the group are on the ground, preparing to hand out food and water.  @Oxfam on Twitter.

World Vision “We are initiating a response to meet basic, urgent needs with temporary shelter, food, water, emergency health interventions, and other vital aid.” @WorldVision on Twitter.

Red Cross Volunteers from the Nepal arm of the Red Cross are helping in the search for survivors. @ICRC on Twitter.

United Nations World Food Programme The United Nations agency is providing food and other aid to survivors. @WFP on Twitter.

Samaritan’s Purse Samaritan’s Purse is a Christian organization providing food, water, shelter, medicine, and other assistance to earthquake survivors. @SamaritansPurse on Twitter.

CARE CARE is asking for donations for critical relief. The group said its humanitarian workers were currently on the ground assessing the situation in Nepal and determining the most immediate needs. @CARE on Twitter.

Save the Children Donations to Save the Children, an organization with extensive reach in Nepal, will go toward efforts to provide protection for children and relief to their families. @SC_Nepal on Twitter.

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After half of forever, we bring you the music video that got me dancing for nearly five months, from knowing absolutely nothing at all. I would like to thank my coach Jan Cerezo, co-dancers Gio Gah...

This video is beautiful. Armi is a beautiful dancer. Those first few steps, damn. And I remember those dancers from Ateneo; they’re so lucky to be dancing with her.

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Day 13: Riddle poem

Riddle

Flushing faces turning red when in your corners hidden, I find myself quite often between your tightest spaces.

Against you my body held Quickly river rushing blood or else of flowing silver understood to mean a life.

I am taken and we are read I of printed words, you of Braille, hands running over your head. When we part, I am shaken.

I hope never to be needed, but should for five minutes intimate spaces I inhabit I’ll allow myself to be held.

---

(Answer in the tags)

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Day 12: Minimally Descriptive Poem

Mountain Province

Mountains reached by winding road Often cool, sometimes cold Rocky perch precarious Amongst them, Applai in simplicity of lives not simple-minded.

Rather, enviable: market, leaves beans, vegetables, fresh grown from hands, literal fruits of labor. Brilliant, sweet, full of flavor

Mountain brews coffee and tea Taste the earth full of body One borne of earth, grown on terraces climbing mountainsides.

Standing facing bracing air clouds and pine. Ground, life, approaching heaven. Remarkably: also dying.

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me

#TeamNotFineAsFuckButStillModeratelyAttractive

sike I am the hottest

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Day 11: Sapphic poem

Commuters

Twilight settles terribly over cities still in motion, finishing shifts with sunsets. Cars and buses interlaid, forceful in their                 pilgrimage forward.

Railway metro travelling up the rundown tracks unsteady, carriages taking time to pause in crowded terminals. Only trains will                tolerate such weight.

Platforms wait while congregate bodies deal in trading, stealing memories—weary faces recollecting, unaware eyes will tell their                narratives clearly.

They are texts to interpret, standing as their lines betray some heaviness. Books whose spines have all but broken, covered in dust descending                much like the twilight.

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Day 10: Abecedarian poem

intercalations, n.

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This is really important actually

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Day 9: Visual Poetry

o!howfireflies

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Day 8: Palinode

Context: a palinode is a poem that contradicts a statement made in a previous poem. Here is one of my old poems, revised.

Fingering

On the matter of touch, I most prefer fingering. Quite a novel feeling, in fact,

how something so deeply involved fills us with promises. Only tips

of tired hands pressing us to think how hard it is to allow one into your life

so quickly. Someone with a hand in you gives so much with the slightest push,

with littlest friction. We can only think about how until then, we never held

to so much sensation.

Here is the palinode.

Fingering

What they don’t tell you is that when you hold on, penetration becomes faced with a small protestation: “why are you still here?” One wonders how without motion there can still be devotion to what cannot fill. Displace the touches on your face and in your places, and wait for some other thing to come in.

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Girls&WomenToKnow: The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson 

Dr Jackson is the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological research university in the United States. A theoretical physicist, inventor,as-well as the highest paid college president in the country!! Dr. Jackson has had a distinguished career that includes senior leadership positions in academia, government, industry, and research. Jackson has been a trailblazer throughout her career, including as the first African-American woman to lead a top-ranked research university.

Education: Dr Jackson holds an S.B in Physics  and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics–both from Massachusetts Institute of Technonlogy.

Awards/Recognition/Achievements: Aside from being the highest paid college president in the country!

Dr Jackson is the first African-American woman to earn a Doctorate at MIT.

The second African American woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics

the first African-American woman to lead a top-ranked research university.

Dr. Jackson has been awarded 52 honorary doctoral degrees.

Dr. Jackson was one of four honorees inducted in 2014 into the U.S. News STEM Leadership Hall of Fame. 

 In 2014, Dr. Jackson also was inducted into the Tech Valley Business Hall of Fame.

In 2010, Dr. Jackson was honored by Black Enterprise Magazine with its Women of Power Legacy Award.

Dr. Jackson also received the 2009 Dr. John Hope Franklin Award from Diverse Issues Magazine.

“top 50 women in science” by Discover Magazine

ESSENCE Magazine book 50 of The Most Inspiring African-Americans.

In 2000, Dr. Jackson was awarded the Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia by the National Society of Black Engineers

In 2013, the board of trustees of the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (NJIHoF) bestowed the prestigious NJIHoF Trustees Award upon Dr. Jackson. The award is given to “someone who truly values and stimulates the inventive and innovative processes, who strives to ensure that all Americans, including students, are inspired and prepared to meet many of the challenges of tomorrow, and whose actions over many years have demonstrated that commitment.”

Dr. Jackson received the inaugural America Competes Award for Public Service in 2012, given by the U.S. Council on Competitiveness to “a leader who has worked tirelessly to improve the quality of life in America and abroad, through public service and private sector outreach, and to those who show an extraordinary commitment to excellence and the American spirit.”

In 2011, the American Association for the Advancement of Science honored Dr. Jackson with its prestigious Philip Hauge Abelson Award. This award is given annually to a public servant who has made sustained exceptional contributions to the advancement of science, or to a scientist whose career has been distinguished both for scientific achievement and for other notable services to the scientific community. 

In 2009, she received the Bouchet Leadership Award Medal from the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a national award given to leaders in academia who are outstanding in their fields of study and have played an important role in diversifying higher education.

-Pierre

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Day 7: Money poem

Investment

Words are coined by silver tongues exchanged in conversations Feigning interest is how lent ears are paid in full attention.

Drawing phrases from pockets is how one fares well, but is credit only due for making friends, not earning them?

Place stock in those trusted, bank on what is counted. There is a limit to how much can be withdrawn at once.

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Day 6: Aubade

When I wake before six,

I don’t open my eyes. Not immediately, not easily, for to do so would mean I admit to the morning that it has won me over. That when it will pull me from bed I will not resist.

Eyelids have dreams I dare not expose, lest light burn the pictures away. I'd rather recall last night than today.

But among things that are running, namely water, the time and myself, I am only the slowest. Rising, the sun reminds: the bed is a horizon I must climb out of.

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Day 5: Edited Emily Dickinson

International Studies

I knew I lost her. Not that she was gone yet, but remoteness denoted how we negotiated.

On her Face was beauty well-known but her Tongue was Alien, as though a Foreign Race had pushed into borders and traversed into my spaces.

Latitudeless, we stayed in our places. Elements unaltered, resolutions came to inevitable arrest.

Only in our Universe did love cause unrest. This had come to be our fate: walls that henceforth helped to remember the Day I paid much for.

My penalty is Penury. Her nation toils for Freedom from my states and their affairs,

But for Restitution there is nothing I owe you and even less you owe me.

---

(based off the Day 5 prompt and the Emily Dickinson poem “Now I knew I lost her —”)

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Day 4: Love poem “without love“

(untitled)

We stand on white sand among friends. Between us there is no distance, as though islands bridged by sand in the center. We let the waves roll over.

Three hours of climbing down steep valley sides, I call out as my feet give way to the ground. Soil and dry pine crumbles but with you I hold steady.

A whale shark swims peacefully beneath the boat that takes us to the coast. We laugh nervously at how it swells the water, at how its back rocks us - and only us - to our distant corner.

In caves I look for you. Not the first time in darkness, I grasp the warmest hand. I pull you to me and I am lifted off the stones, we make our way toward light.

Beside you on couches I rest your pen on my papers. There is something I have not said, content and quiet: You are, yet there is never quite, enough.

---

The prompt was to make a love poem without the usual trappings or words or images of love. But let me say it here: I love you, J.